


Players Rites

by Northumbrian



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Ficlet, Fluff, Post War, Post-War, Romance, The Quidditch Pitch: Eternity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-20
Updated: 2012-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-27 16:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10813029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northumbrian/pseuds/Northumbrian
Summary: Ginny Weasley is about to step out onto the pitch for her first ever professional Quidditch match. Are her teammates ready? More importantly, is she ready?





	Players Rites

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).

**Players Rites**

Match day had finally arrived. Ginny Weasley’s stomach had vanished, there wa nothing insde she could feel the empty void, and hear her heartbeat echoing in it. She closed her locker and placed her hand on the wall. On the other side of that wall, in the visitors changing room, Ballycastle Bats were getting ready to fly.

This was it, her first ever game as a professional Quidditch player. Eight weeks of intensive training with the Harpies had paid off. Her performance in the final training session two days ago had been enough to get her selected for the team’s first game of the season, but she knew that she would need to play extremely well to keep her place on the team. The Harpies had six Chasers to choose from, and she was new, young and inexperienced. Failure to impress would lead to weeks, months, or years of being a reserve player.

There were still fifteen minutes before the game was due to start, but she was ready. She nervously adjusted her new Harpies robes, and rechecked her broom. The brand new Firebolt II had been provided by the club. It hung in the air, waiting to take her into this new stage of her life.

Photographs of former Captains and players waved cheerily from the walls and made gestures of encouragement. Ginny pulled her gaze away from the photos. Seeing the great Harpies players of the past, the heroines of her childhood, made her nervous. How could she ever measure up to them? She looked around the green-painted changing room at her teammates, hoping to calm herself. None of them seemed nervous. But none of them were ready, either, and they did not seem to be in any hurry to get ready.

The Seeker, Olivia ‘Livy’ Aitkenhead, was wearing nothing but lacy white underwear. She was energetically brushing her long dark hair with a very old and worn pink brush. This was Olivia’s first game for the Harpies, too. But unlike Ginny it was not her first professional game, she’d spent two years with Woollongong Wanderers in the Australasian League.

Olivia and Ginny were the Harpies newcomers; the club's two closed-season signings. They were “the fledglings”, the rest of the team had been together for at least two seasons. Gwenog and Blodwen, the two first team Beaters, had been playing together for a dozen years. At only eighteen, Ginny was the youngest by several years, and she was still getting to know her teammates.

She would soon get to know them much better, as she would be living close to them. The Harpies management insisted that their players to live on Ynys Môn, on the island where the Harpies ground was located. It was in Ginny’s contract. She had already learned that the Welsh members of the team, who were the majority, insisted on using the name Ynys Môn, not Anglesey for the island. The club was arranging local accommodation for both Olivia and Ginny.

Olivia continued to brush her hair.

Only one person was close to being ready, Gillian Gilfillan, one of Ginny’s fellow Chasers, wore almost all of her uniform. All she needed to do was put on her right sock and boot. For some reason, however, Gillian seemed disinclined to do so. She simply sat staring at a bronze Knut which she held in her hand.

The third Chaser, Tegan Godolphin, was sitting cross legged on the floor completely naked. Tegan had her eyes closed; her hands were resting, palms uppermost, on her knees and she appeared to be meditating. Other than Olivia and Ginny, who kept taking sidelong glances at Tegan, no one else in the changing room was paying any attention to her.

The team captain, Gwenog Jones, was sitting on the bench, her Beater’s bat by her side. She, too, was in her underwear, though hers was rather more sensible than Livy Aitkenhead’s. Gwenog was holding the most threadbare, worn and holey pair of blue cotton knickers Ginny had ever seen. Fascinated, Ginny watched her captain from the corner of her eye. Gwenog carefully turned the knickers inside out. She then removed the pair she was wearing and slowly and deliberately put on the threadbare pair. She was wearing them back to front as well as inside out. As Ginny watched, Gwenog took them off and put them back on the right way round, but still inside out. Gwenog then finally began to pull on her Harpies strip.

Beater Blodwen James was also in her underwear. Her Harpies kit was hanging in front of her and she was gently prodding it with her Beater’s bat.

Rhiannon Johns, the Keeper, had only just arrived. She’d peered through the changing room door and looked at her teammates before grinning at Ginny and dashing into the room. Rhiannon quickly began to change.

Suddenly nervous, Ginny turned her back on her teammates and walked into the shower and toilet area. She pushed open the door to the first toilet cubicle but was halted by an angry shout.

‘No!’ Rhiannon bellowed. ‘That one is _mine_!’

‘What? Why?’ asked Ginny. ‘For Merlin’s sake, Rhiannon, it doesn’t matter which _toilet_ you use, does it?’

‘It does, Ginny,’ said Gwenog forcefully. ‘In Quidditch, everything matters! I saw you watching me. I’ve worn these knickers in every professional game I’ve played, apart from one, the first game of my second season. At the end of my first season my Captain told me that wearing lucky knickers was a stupid superstition, so I wore a new pair. That game, the _Cannons_ beat us!’ Gwenog shook her head in disbelief.

‘Luckily, I hadn’t thrown them out,’ she continued earnestly. I accidentally put them on inside out and back to front when we won the European cup final five years ago. They were so uncomfortable that before we got out onto the pitch I put them the right way round. But they were still inside out. Now, it’s a pre-match ritual. Make sure that you always get here early, because Rhiannon is _always_ the last player into the changing room, and she has sole use of the toilet cubicle nearest to the changing area in _every_ ground we play. Here at home, it’s that one. You need to know these things, Ginny, they’re important.’

Ginny looked at her stern and usually humourless Captain curiously. Was she being wound up? The other players had played several tricks on her during practice sessions. But this was a match, this was serious. Ginny looked uncertainly around at her teammates.

Tegan Godolphin finally uncrossed her legs and stood. She looked curiously at Ginny.

‘Every player I’ve ever known has a pre-match ritual, Ginny,’ said Tegan. The lanky brunette stretched up on her tiptoes. ‘Except me, of course,’ she added.

‘Yeah, apparently, if you’re Cornish, sitting naked on the floor and meditating for a quarter of an hour before the game doesn’t count as a ritual,’ Blodwen James observed sarcastically. Gillian Gilfillan snorted with laughter as she dropped the Knut she’d been holding into her Quidditch boot and finally put on her sock.

‘Don’t you have a ritual, Ginny?’ Tegan asked, ignoring the two Beaters and finally beginning to get dressed.

‘No.’ Ginny shook her head emphatically.

‘Really?’ asked Tegan curiously. ‘You won all four of the games you captained at Hogwarts last year. Wasn’t there anything you did before every game?’

‘Harry!’ Ginny realised.

Her team burst out laughing.

‘You did Harry Potter before every game? At Hogwarts?’ asked Blodwen. ‘Impressive.’

‘Not really,’ Tegan sniggered. ‘He can’t be much good if he left her capable of riding a broom afterwards.’

‘Yeah, is his equipment defective? Is he all talk and no action? Does he suffer from premature Expelliarmus?’ asked Gillian.

‘Oh, sod off, the lot of you,’ Ginny snapped, suddenly very nervous. ‘I _need_ Harry. I need my pre-match warm up.’

Gwenog Jones swore. ‘It’s too late, Ginny. And besides, you aren’t at Hogwarts now, this isn’t a mixed changing room with cubicles. Men are not allowed to set foot in here! Not under _any_ circumstances.’

‘And you can’t leave, Ginny,’ Rhiannon said, suddenly looking worried. ‘Because, when you come back, you will be the last person in the changing room! I’ll…’

‘But…’ Ginny began.

Ginny’s protests were interrupted by someone knocking on the locked changing room door. Scowling, Gwenog Jones walked across, unlocked it and opened it a fraction.

‘Sorry, Gwenog,’ the team’s Healer, Joanna Swift, apologised. ‘But Harry Potter’s out here. He said…’

‘Harry,’ Ginny shouted, ‘I need my warm-up!’

She pushed past her Captain and pulled the changing room door wide open.

‘You can’t come in Potter!’ Gwenog snarled, trying to interpose herself between Harry and Ginny.

‘And you can’t step outside the door, Ginny! Please,’ Rhiannon begged.

‘You did say warm up?’ asked Harry hopefully.

‘Yes but you have to stay out there, and I can’t leave,’ said Ginny.

‘Easy,’ said Harry. He stood with his toes just outside the door and opened his arms. Ginny jumped and Harry caught her easily. As she wrapped her arms and legs around him and sat on his cradling hands, he kissed her.

Ginny and Harry ignored the jeers, catcalls and whistles of her teammates and simply kissed, and kissed.

They were finally interrupted by Gwenog Jones announcing, ‘It’s time to go, Ginny. Are we ready, Harpies?’

‘Yes,’ Ginny’s teammates chorused.

Harry carefully lowered Ginny back onto the floor, taking care to stay outside the door and making certain that she was inside the room. ‘Fly well, Ginny, and win the game,’ he said. ‘Good luck, ladies.’

Gwenog slammed the door in Harry’s face and locked it.

‘Ladies!’ snorted Blodwen. ‘What an idiot! Are there any _ladies_ in here?’

‘NO!’ the team shouted.

‘He’s not an idiot! You’re only jealous, all of you, because _my_ pre-match ritual is so much better than yours,’ Ginny smirked. ‘I’ve never lost a game after a snog from Harry. Let’s go and win.’


End file.
